If You’re Going To Play Dead Then You Can’t Get Up

I would think this concept would be pretty clear, but if you’re going to play dead then you can’t just get up and walk around. It might be hot, you might want some water, but it wrecks the whole thing if you just get up and start walking around. Do it right or don’t do it at all.

Apparently, a group of vendors in China decided to stage a protest, claiming that urban management workers — known as “chengguan” — (who had earlier given the vendors trouble for blocking traffic) had beaten a sidewalk vendor named Han to death. Unfortunately, as Han was playing dead under a sheet on a gurney, the heat wave got to him. He gave up and got up to get some water.

According to the article, Han has been detained for disturbing social order, as one might expect for getting up while faking one’s death.

Frankly, though the chengguan may be a real problem (I don’t know) and the vendors may really have needed to do something (again, I don’t know), I’m thinking they shouldn’t have gone through with this unless Han was really committed. I don’t know how hot it was, but if he just needed a drink of water and got up as a result, then I’m thinking he wasn’t as committed as he needed to be. The vendors probably should have figured that out before they got started.

I’m just saying, if you’re going to play dead, you need to really be into it. You can’t just get up for drinks of water. If you’re going to do that, you just shouldn’t bother in the first place.